In this post, I felt a certain tone of Washington Post's sarky point of view as usual.
They'd like to picture that the Japanese officials, a kind of historians, and some nationalists DENY any Japan's fault. " Oh yeah, they're Japanese right wings. "
When people who observe this issue see or hear the words like " right wings ",
" revisionists " , most of them would consider that it's just a nonsense. They'll never go beyond the background of this issue instead of being a bit more insightful. It may be much easier to be a good person and at the same time actually being trapped a cheap trick of politically correctness.
But when I take a good look at this global "comfort women" phenomenon, I can't ignore its awkwardness.
And I just really wonder. Why they, McGraw-Hill side historians, stick to the 200,000 comfort women victims so much?
Are confort women supporters really the claimers who support poor women?
Not a bunch of demanders?
It's time to start to take a look them pretty carefully and think about it also.

[ Quote from the first W.P. article ]Now Japanese professors, led by Hata, are taking action, writing to McGraw-Hill to contest the textbook’s statement that as many as 200,000 women were forcibly recruited to be comfort women for Japan’s imperial army. Hata says the real number is about 20,000.

They also take issue with the claim that the women were “a gift from the emperor.” “This is too impolite expression for a school textbook, which defames the national head,” the Japanese letter says.

The Japanese historians also criticize the estimate that the women serviced 20 to 30 soldiers a day. If that were true, Hata said, “the soldiers would have had no time to fight the war; they would have been too busy going to the brothel all the time.”

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Following contents form texas-daddy.com has no English title, so I would like to say,
A press conference about " The Background of South Korean Comfort Women Issue "

For the beginning I sincerely hope that everyone here will not misunderstand the reason why we are here today. We are not trying to rewrite or revise the history.

Those so called Korean comfort women were Japanese citizens living in Korean peninsula during World War II.

They were also the ones who fought against our enemy in the capacity of providing comfort to the Japanese Imperial soldiers, not only physically but also mentally.
They went right behind the battle field to comfort the soldiers who put their lives on the line to defend Japan.
Therefore, we greatly appreciated those unnamed women who served the nation along with our soldiers.

We really feel that no one should degrade the honor of those comfort women.
But unfortunately, there are some groups of people who are continuing to defame the honor of these women.

As everyone knows comfort women issue is a very complex issue so in order to make it a little simple, I want to divide this in 7 subjects. These 7 subjects will cover only a portion of the whole issue but I selected issues which are not very well known but important to consider when we talk about comfort women issue.

No.1 【Who initiated this comfort women story and who exploited this issue for what purpose.】

No.2 【Senior Korean pension and suicide】

No.3 【What is House of Nanum】

No.4 【History text book of Korean high school】

No.5 【Gangster Strategies】

No.6 【Revisionism】

No.7 【Are comfort women sex slaves?】

No.1 【Who initiated this comfort women story and who exploited this issue for what purpose.】

Japan is a democratic nation enjoying freedom of speech, freedom of expression.
But Korea, who is critical about Japan on this issue, has limited freedom of speech and limited freedom of expression especially the contentious issues with Japan.
It is not easy to study this issue even in academia in South Korea.

Professor Lee Yong-hoon who studied this issue spending a lot of time, came to a conclusion.
He addressed Korean people at a conference to speak about his study.
The result was, he could not find any concrete evidence to prove any trace of kidnapping or forcible draft of comfort women after he interviewed many self-proclaimed former comfort women.

During his speech, he was attacked and beat up by audiences there at the conference.
Because his conclusion did not correspond with their expectation of the victimhood business.
Finally after being beat up and humiliated, he had to apologize to the self-proclaimed former comfort women in order to keep his position at the Seoul University.

There is an another honorary Professor at Seoul University named An Byeong-jik who also studied about this issue but could not find any traces showing forcible draft of women.

The significance of this professor was, he sided with an organization critical of Japan named “The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan” and conducted investigations together with this organization.
But after spending 3 years on this study, he concluded that the group who he was working with was fabricating the history just to extract money from Japan.
Because he is an honest man, he could not accept this fraud.

Also, there is another professor of Sejong University named Ms. Park Yu-ha who published a book in August 2013 titled “Teikoku no Ianfu” which is “Comfort women of empire.”
She stated in this book, both Japan and Korea need to be responsible.

She was sued by self-proclaimed former comfort women, (actuality is a comfort women support group) because they claimed that her book is defamation of character. Korean court announced a verdict to ban publishing the book unless 34 parts of her book were deleted.

These 3 incidents related to Korean university professors obviously telling that anyone opposing to those two groups of comfort women supporters are punished harshly. There is no freedom of speech or freedom of expression in South Korea related to this issue. It is just like a country lacking basic human rights all of us enjoy in this room.

An editor of Sankei Newspaper Seoul bureau Mr. Tasuya Kato arrested because what he wrote for a Japanese newspaper was considered defamation of President Park. Although what he wrote for the Japanese newspaper was just an article cited from Korean newspaper.

Now we need to clarify who initiated this comfort women issue.
Surprisingly, this issue is initiated by Japanese people.
Initially, a Japanese communist whose name is Seiji Yoshida.
Do you know that we have communist party in Japan? The name of the party is “Japan communist party. It exists even today and they have 33 seats in the congress. It’s not a joke.

Yoshida was Japanese military personnel who served in Korean peninsula during WWII. After the war, he came back to Japan and issued a book titled “My war crime.”
In this book, he stated that he kidnapped well over 200 women to make them comfort women by the order of Japanese military.

Korean news media went the island called Cheju Island to know the legitimacy of his claim. Also Japanese historians and journalists investigated but could not find any traces of forcible draft. According to the Cheju news paper’s interviews in the islands, people living there said, “If anyone who kidnapped a single girl from around 200 houses, it would be a big news. It is impossible to kidnap over 200 people secretly from this island.”

Later, Yoshida was interviewed by a magazine company and they pressed him an answer.
He testified “If I wrote what I experience, the book would not be sold well.” “It is same as you news media people are doing.” He suddenly took a defiant attitude toward the interviewer.

But the problem was not ended at the point.
The book was reported by an editor named Takashi Uemura of Asahi News paper on their paper several times.
The news was spread out to Korea and the book was translated into Korean language and published in South Korea.

The wife of the editor at Asahi Shinbun was happened to be a Korean woman whose mother was a Chair person of “The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.”
What? Mother in law of this editor of Asahi shinbun was a chair person of an organization who has been demanding apology and compensation?
We came to know the system they established to earn money.
Although it was obvious that the news articles he wrote were all based on the false, Asahi newspaper company did not correct those articles and left it as they were.

Last year, we spent a lot of effort to investigate what actually happened with this Asahi newspaper company, many of Japanese protested against the company to correct those wrongly written articles and finally they gave up to maintain the old articles written based on the false and corrected 16 articles which were incorrect. Later they corrected another two articles related.

As I stated earlier, the wife of this Japanese editor is Korean,
Therefore mother in law is Korean who is also a chair person of a group of comfort women to extract money from Japanese government.
She claimed that anyone who was certain age during the war can be a member of the group if you pay the membership fee, in return, you will get big money back when the group succeeded to get compensation from the Japanese government.

The paramount reason of this comfort women issue is, those who are trying to get money is trying to let the people to see the history by current cultural standard emotionally.

This false story of comfort women was started by Seiji Yoshida’s book then Takashi Uemura who has Korean wife and relatives took advantage of his position to spread Yoshida’s lie by writing to the newspaper repeatedly to bring benefit to the organization his mother in law runs by distorting the story further to exploit the emotion of innocent people by telling sad and touchy story.

Above of it, Korean government found it is usable issue to avoid the frustration directed to them from their own people and shift it to this comfort women issue to release the pressure to the government.

No.2 【Senior Korean pension and suicide】

Korean people who paid over 10 years for social welfare can get pension after 60 years old. It is selectable either from 55 or 60.
But the pension they get is maximum $360 per person or $576 per couple per month. Avarage pension is around $280 per month.

Even the people who get maximum amount makes $4,320 per person or $6,912 per couple.
The average income of workers in Korea is $69,120 according to Korean government.

By comparing the income while working and on pension is so much different and almost impossible for the people to keep their daily life.

This poverty put the elderly people to commit suicide.
Over half of the suicide in Korea is age over 70.

In 2011, the number of suicide committed by those elderly people is 2.6 times more than the average of OECD member nations which are 88.4 per 100,000 in the age of 70s and 116.9 in the age of 80s.

This makes easy for those two major comfort women groups to exploit the poverty of these low income elderly people by saying that “if you become a member of the group, you will be paid good amount when Japanese government pays reparation.”

The worst part of these groups were correcting money from those poor elderly people to be a member to get the rights to be paid when it is successful.
But the plan did not work and those people who cheated elderly people were arrested by authority but the groups are still searching for the chance.

Interestingly, when Japanese government sat up fund to support those women, some of those former comfort women received money from this fund but as it was not paid to the organizations, that organizations started criticizing, bushing and bullying those self-proclaimed former comfort women who received money. Because those organizations did not get any of them.

The organizations who are supporting comfort women to get money are;
1. Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan and
2. Association for the Pacific war victims
The mother in law of Takashi Uemura who wrote those misleading articles is a board member of this organization.

Many of those elderly people are not getting pension.
Because you need to pay for 10 years at least.
Even the people who are in pension getting $4,000 to $6,000 annually.
This is why many elderly people are committing suicide.
Poverty of elderly people is now over 50% from the entire population over 70 year old.

But if anyone who are certified by government that who used work as comfort women get a right to live in the facility named “House of Nanum” or “House of Share.”

No.3 【What is House of Nanum】

A Korean Buddhist organization established a facility to plant those women who were certified that they were former comfort women which is called “House of Nanum” or “House of Share.”

This establishment is run by donation.
But there is another reason of existence of this facility.

There were a women named Kim Hak-sun and a few other women came forward in 1991, they filed a law suit to Japanese government to demand compensation.

In November 2004, Japanese Supreme Court dismissed the cause of this law suit. Because she testified that she was sold by her father in law to the Kisaeng House which is basically Koran official whorehouse.
This means the prostitutes were public servant in Korea.

At the same time, she was invited to speak at a program on NHK because the comfort women issue was/is a big issue at the time.

Nobuo Ikeda who was a director of the NHK documentary program trying to make a program to prove or accuse the forcible drafts of Japanese Imperial Military.

He testified that before the interview of the former comfort women, a Japanese lawyer named Mizuho Fukushima was lecturing to those women what to speak at the interview repeatedly in the backstage.
She was acting words making up the dialogue of interview.
She was a lawyer to those comfort women who filed a law suit against Japanese government.

Another comfort woman testified that she was kidnaped by Japanese soldiers and forced into Jeep. Same women also said “I had to have more customers during the Christmas time.”
We did not have jeep at that time, also we are not Christian nation so there is no days off during that period of Christmas.
We think she was working for US soldiers during Korean war from her testimony.

Some other comfort women said they were forced to be sex slave to work in Taiwan, Toyama prefecture and Busan Korea.
We did not have comfort station in those particular areas.

As you can see, if those comfort women supporters let those women to speak freely, they testify different thing at each interview.
This is why they needed to have “House of Nanumu” or in English “House of Sharing” to isolate those comfort women not to get interviewed.

Surprisingly, the manager of this House of Nanum forced the female workers to have sexual contact with the manager. They forced to have sexual contact 2 to 3 times in a month according to the testimony of those victims.
This is not a joke. The manager is sent by the religious organization who established this house of nanum. The managers were monks.
After this incident came out, those managers were fired.

No.4 【History text book of Korean high school】

Until 2010, there was only one text book called “National history” which was issued by Korean government.
Every student studied by the same text book.
The meaning of this is, which is similar to the bible for Christian or Coran for the Muslim. What is written in the bible is the obligatory for the people who believe the religion.

In Japan, there are about 9 private publishers who are making and printing text books for Japanese students and the contents in the text book is not the same for every text book.
Each publisher needs to follow the guide line which is provided by Ministry of education but as long as the contents given to them by government is included, it is free for them to add further on it or other prospective.

I’ve read the Korean history text book which was published by Korean government.
Even on the same page, upper side and lower side on the same page is contradictory.

Now what will happen if someone study by this National text book?
If it states that the number of forced sexual slavery was 200,000, they all believe it.
No exception. Because if someone said 300,000 or 150,000 were forced, then the one who answered it will be told “You need to study more, it is 200,000.”
If any question related to this at their exam, they need to answer 200,000.
It is the only correct answer for them. Them means all Korean people.

After students graduated school who learned by this National History text book, they realized that what they learned is different from what other people learned in other countries.
Within Korea, everyone learned by same text book so there is no exception and everyone says same thing so it is natural for them and it became a kind of common sense for them.

So when those people faces to the different idea or though, they strived to fabricate to match to what they have learned even telling a lots of lies. It’s just like cult organization.

No.5 【Gangster Strategies】

When we talk about comfort women issue in abroad, leftist always label us “revisionist" "nationalist" and "far rightwinger."
Also we are often told by those leftists, “Even Japanese government confirmed that there were forcible abductions by Kono statement which Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono spoke.”
But if you read Kono statement closely, there is no potion admitting forcible abduction.

In Japan, we have groups of people called “Yakuza” which is equivalent to Mafia or gungsters.
Yakuza deliberately gets hit by an automobile from behind for the purpose of extortion; an automobile accident fraud.
They use handbrake not to light the stop light of the automobile.

Then the Yakuza driver who was hit in the rear emerges from the vehicle with smile on his face to calm down the situation says, “I am all right and my car is not damaged so no need to call police.” “But just in case, I hope you to write that you will fully responsible in case if I suffer any injuries within the next couple of days.”

If you signs the paper, you will get a call from Yakuza next day or so claiming that he is experience in pain on his neck and back. As you signed the paper you need to bring money to the Yakuza. This is how they make money.

In March 1993, South Korean President Kim Yong sam stated in his speech, “We’ve decided not ask Japan for further compensation as long as we get official apology.”

Then Japanese government negotiated about the wording of Kono statement which was the official apology from Japanese government.

Korean government requested correction on 11 points in which Japanese government agreed 10 out of 11 requested changes including the word “force” or “forcible abduction.”
This statement was what the Korean government requested and approved..
Japanese government announced this statement in August 1993.

Right after the release of this Kono statement, the South Korean government went back on their word and started demanding another apology and second round of compensation.

Japanese government wanted to move ahead and keep the past in the past that was the reason for issuing the apology in the Kono statement although we had treaty in 1965 between South Korea and Japan to finalize any further claim, as you can see, that did not work eiher.

No.6 【Revisionism】

Whenever and wherever we go to explain for the comfort women issue, those who oppose us label us “Far right wingers,” “Revisionists” and “Nationalists”
But the actual people who revised the history were the Asahi newspaper and Koreans.
In 1991, all of sudden, this issue came under the light.
This means those who fabricated the truth at that time have to be the one who needed to be condemned as revisionists.
This issue was dormant for 46 years after the war and all of sudden it was resurrected in 1991. Why the silence for 46 years?

No.7 【Are comfort women sex slaves?】

The individual who started using this term is Japanese lawyer named Etsuro Totsuka in 1992 February in Geneva at the UN human rights committee.
I had an opportunity to talk with this gentleman last July in Geneva at UN.
I asked him why did you present this issue to the UN.
He explained to me that he has been sending over 20 bills in 34 years related to human right abuses to the UN human rights committee but none of them were accepted.
But when he changed the term from comfort women to Sex slave, immediately, the UN human rights committee reacted positively and adopted the term he created.

So I questioned him again, why did you do it. His reply was, “It was just my imagination. I am proud of it” he said with full of smile on his face.

The slave or slavery for the western culture is very sensitive as it should be.
So the use of this term by the lawyer was calculated to invoke emotions from people in the West.

In the US army report No.49 clearly stated that the women were nothing more than well paid prostitutes or camp followers.
The reason why this issue became so complex is, once again, it was initiated by Japanese people. South Koreans are just exploiting this ignorant behavior of Japanese.
This comfort women story was initiated by Japanese, lawyers found it will be beneficial, Asahi newspaper found it is profitable and Japanese changed the term from comfort women to Sex slave. The number of comfort women which is said now 200,000 was also initiated by a Japanese lawmaker.

In the state of California, 80% of the illegal prostitutes arrested by authority is Korean.
They use Japanese like name on their whorehouses such as "Tokyo," "Osaka" and "Kobe" masquerading as massage parlor.
According to the Korean government figure, 50,000 Korean prostitutes are working in Japan and another 50,000 are working in USA, Australia and other nations. This means that Korean government is aware of the situation that they are exporting large number of prostitutes to overseas.
There are also figures presented by a women's rights group in Korea who estimates the total prostitutes in Korea is over 1 million. They are all doing it for money.

4% of Korean GDP is generated by prostitution today which is equivalent to the total amount of agriculture and fishing industry output in South Korea.

Now we need to question. They claim that they were forced by Japanese army to be sex slave but now they are voluntarily involving to sexual business not only in Korea but also in overseas. I see this contradictory.
?This is my perspective of this issue.

“Our government was one big pimp for the U.S. military”
Scholars on the issue say that the South Korean government was motivated in part by fears that the American military would leave, and that it wanted to do whatever it could to prevent that.